The Comic English Grammar: A New and Facetious Introduction to the English Tongue

By Percival Leigh

The Comic English Grammar: A New and Facetious Introduction to the English Tongue is a humorous book by Percival Leigh, illustrated by John Leech. It covers the rules and principles of grammar in a comical way, using examples from literature and everyday life. The book aims to amuse and instruct readers of all ages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Dec 11, 2019
• ISBN: 4064066203870

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Percival Leigh

The Comic English Grammar: A New and Facetious Introduction to the English Tongue

Published by Good Press, 2022

[e-mail]

EAN 4064066203870

Table of Contents

PREFACE.

PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE.

PART I. ORTHOGRAPHY.

CHAPTER. I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

PART II. ETYMOLOGY.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

PART III. SYNTAX.

PART IV. PROSODY.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

ADDRESS TO YOUNG STUDENTS.

PREFACE.

Table of Contents

It may be considered a strange wish on the part of an Author, to have his preface compared to a donkey’s gallop. We are nevertheless desirous that our own should be considered both short and sweet. For our part, indeed, we would have every preface as short as an orator’s cough, to which, in purpose, it is so nearly like; but Fashion requires, and like the rest of her sex, requires because she requires, that before a writer begins the business of his book, he should give an account to the world of his reasons for producing it; and therefore, to avoid singularity, we shall proceed with the statement of our own, excepting only a few private ones, which are neither here nor there.

To advance the interests of mankind by promoting the cause of Education; to ameliorate the conversation of the masses; to cultivate Taste, and diffuse Refinement; these are the objects which we have in view in submitting a Comic English Grammar to the patronage of a discerning Public. Nor have we been actuated by philanthropic motives alone, but also by a regard to Patriotism, which, as it has been pronounced on high authority to be the last refuge of a scoundrel, must necessarily be the first concern of an aspiring and disinterested mind. We felt ourselves called upon to do as much, at least, for Modern England as we had before done for Ancient Rome; and having been considered by competent judges to have infused a little liveliness into a dead language, we were bold enough to hope that we might extract some amusement from a living one.

Few persons there are, whose ears are so extremely obtuse, as not to be frequently annoyed at the violations of Grammar by which they are so often assailed. It is really painful to be forced, in walking along the streets, to hear such phrases as, "That ’ere homnibus. Where’ve you bin. Vot’s the hodds? and the like. Very dreadful expressions are also used by draymen and others in addressing their horses. What can possibly induce a human being to say Gee woot! ’Mather way! or Woa? not to mention the atrocious Kim aup! of the ignorant and degraded costermonger. We once actually heard a fellow threaten to pitch into" his dog! meaning, we believe, to beat the animal.

It is notorious that the above and greater enormities are perpetrated in spite of the number of Grammars already before the world. This fact sufficiently excuses the present addition to the stock; and as serious English Grammars have hitherto failed to effect the desired reformation, we are induced to attempt it by means of a Comic one.

With regard to the moral tendency of our labours, we may here be permitted to remark, that they will tend, if successful, to the suppression of evil speaking.

We shall only add, that as the Spartans used to exhibit a tipsy slave to their children with a view to disgust them with drunkenness, so we, by giving a few examples here and there, of incorrect phraseology, shall expose, in their naked deformity, the vices of speech to the ingenuous reader.

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PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE.

Table of Contents

Our native country having been, from time immemorial, entitled Merry England, it is clear that, provided it has been called by a right name, a Comic Grammar will afford the most hopeful means of teaching its inhabitants their language.

That the epithet in question has been correctly applied, it will therefore be our business to show.

If we can only prove that things which foreigners regard in the most serious point of view, and which, perhaps, ought in reality to be so considered, afford the modern Minotaur John Bull, merely matter of amusement, we shall go far towards the establishment of our position. We hope to do this and more also.

Births, marriages, and deaths, especially the latter, must be allowed to be matters of some consequence. Every one knows what jokes are made upon the two first subjects. Those which the remaining one affords, we shall proceed to consider.

Suicide, for instance, is looked upon by Mr. Bull with a very different eye from that with which his neighbours regard it. As to an abortive attempt thereat, it excites in his mind unmitigated ridicule, instead of interest and sympathy. In Paris a foolish fellow, discontented with the world, or, more probably, failing in some attempt to make himself conspicuous, ties a brickbat to his neck, and jumps, at twelve o’clock of the day, into the Seine. He thereby excites great admiration in the minds of the bystanders; but were he to play the same trick on London Bridge, as soon as he had been pulled out of the water he would only be laughed at for his pains.

There was a certain gentleman, an officer in the navy, one Lieutenant Luff; at least we have never heard the fact of his existence disputed; who used to spend all his time in drinking grog; and at last, when he could get no more, thought proper to shoot himself through the chest. In France he would have been buried in Père La Chaise, or some such place, and would have had an ode written to his memory. As his native country, however, was the scene of his exploit, he was interred, for the affair happened some years ago, in a cross-road; and his fate has been made the subject of a comic song.

That our countrymen regard Death as a jest, no one who considers their bravery in war or their appetite in peace, can possibly doubt. And the expressions, to hop the twig, to kick the bucket, to go off the hooks, to turn up the toes, and so on, vernacularly used as synonymous with to expire, sufficiently show the jocular light in which the last act of the farce of Life is viewed in Her Majesty’s dominions.

An execution is looked upon abroad as a serious affair; but with us it is quite another matter. Capital punishments, whatever they may be to the sufferers, are to the spectators, if we may judge from their behaviour, little else than capital jokes. The terms which, in common discourse, are used by the humble classes to denote the pensile state, namely, dancing on nothing, having a drop too much, or being troubled with a line, are quite playful, and the Last Dying Speech of the criminal is usually a species of composition which might well be called An Entertaining Narrative illustrated with Humourous Designs.

The play of George Barnwell, in which a deluded linendraper’s apprentice commits a horrid murder on the body of a pious uncle, excites, whenever it is represented, as much amusement as if it were a comedy; and there is also a ballad detailing the same circumstances, which, when sung at convivial meetings, is productive of much merriment. Billy Taylor, too, another ballad of the same sort, celebrates, in jocund strains, an act of unjustifiable homicide.

Even the terrors of the other world are converted, in Great Britain, into the drolleries of this. The awful apparitions of the unfortunate Miss Bailey, and the equally unfortunate Mr. Giles Scroggins, have each of them furnished the materials of a comical ditty; and the terrific appearance of the Ghost of a Sheep’s Head to one William White,—a prodigy which would be considered in Germany as fearful in the extreme, has been applied, by some popular but anonymous writer, to the same purpose. The bodily ablation of an unprincipled exciseman by the Prince of Darkness, a circumstance in itself certainly of a serious nature, has been recorded by one of our greatest poets in strains by no means remarkable for gravity. The appellation, Old Nick, applied by the vulgar to the Prince in question, is, in every sense of the words, a nickname; and the aliases by which, like many of his subjects, he is also called and known, such as Old Scratch, Old Harry, or The Old Gentleman, are, to say the very least of them, terms that border on the familiar.

In the popular drama of Punch,[1] we observe a perfect climax of atrocities and horrors. Victim after victim falls prostrate beneath the cudgel of the deformed and barbarous monster; the very first who feels his tyranny being the wife of his bosom. He, meanwhile, behaves in the most heartless manner, actually singing and capering among the mangled carcases. Benevolence is shocked, Justice is derided, Law is set at nought, and Constables are slain. The fate to which he had been consigned by a Jury of his Country is eluded; and the Avenger of Crime is circumvented by the wily assassin. Lastly, to crown the whole, Retribution herself is mocked; and the very Arch Fiend is dismissed to his own dominions with a fractured skull. And at every stage of these frightful proceedings shouts of uproarious laughter attest the delight of the beholders, increasing in violence with every additional terror, and swelling at the concluding one to an almost inextinguishable peal.

Indeed there is scarcely any shocking thing out of which we can extract no amusement, except the loss of money, wherein, at least when it is our own, we cannot see anything to laugh at.

Some will say that we make it a principle to convert whatever frightens other people into a jest, in order that we may imbibe a contempt for danger; and that our superiority (universally admitted) over all nations in courage and prowess, is, in fact, owing to the way which we have acquired of laughing all terrors, natural and supernatural, utterly to scorn. With these, however, we do not agree. Our national laughter is, in our opinion, as little based on principle as our national actions have of late years been. We laugh from impulse, or, as we do everything else, because we choose. And we shall find, on examination,